te for one who had been selected by the citizens of
Carter's Camp to go on an important mission. But Pete had his own
reasons for his actions. He crept along behind the stumps and logs till
he reached the forest. Then, as if the shadow gave him fresh courage and
dignity, he drew himself upright, and started at a sharp trot down the
road toward the village.

We have said that Pete had reasons for his conduct. They were good ones.
In the first place, he was an Indian. Not a "noble son of the forest,"
such as Cooper loved to picture, but a mean, dirty, yellow-faced
"_Injun_." Lazy and worthless, picking up a living about the lumber
camps, working as little as he could, and eating and drinking as much as
possible: such was the messenger. The mission was worse yet.

It was Christmas Eve. The snow covered the ground, and the ice had
stilled for the time the mouth of the roaring river. It was Saturday
night as well; and for some time past the lumbermen had been considering
the advisability of keeping the good old holiday with some form of
celebration suited to the occasion.

The citizens of Carter's Camp were not remarkably fastidious. They knew
but one form of celebration, and they had no thought of hunting out new
ones. The one thing needful to make a celebration completely successful
was--liquor. This they must have in order to do justice to the day.

The temperance laws of Carter's were very strict. Not that the moral
sentiment of the place was particularly high, but it had been noticed
that the amounts of labor and whisky were in inverse proportion. The
more whisky, the less labor. It was a pure question of political
economy. The foreman had often stated that he would prosecute to the
fullest extent of the law the first man caught bringing whisky into
camp. The foreman did not attempt, perhaps, to deny that his knowledge
of the law was somewhat crude. He had forcibly stated, however, that
should a case be brought before him, he would himself act as judge and
jury, while his fist and foot would take the place of witness and
counsel. There was something so terrible in this statement, coming as it
did from the largest man in camp, that very little whisky had thus far
been brought in.

Christmas had come, and the drinking element in Carter's Camp proposed
that Pete Shivershee--the "Injun"--be sent to town for a quantity of the
liquid poison, that the drinkers might "enjoy" themselves.

Bill Gammon found Pete curled up b